by John Gardner
Everyone knew the man, and – Steinhauer thought – there was a great deal of sycophancy going his way. He could well be the man who was needed. Certainly he had the background, intelligence and talent. Then the doors opened and the three English sailors arrived, a little drunk and very naive.
They were also petty officers – off HMS Cornwall, Steinhauer guessed, for the Royal Navy had this cadet-training ship in port on a courtesy visit, though they would have to search hard to discover any courtesy among the German naval personnel at Kiel. For everyone knew, in that May of 1909, that the Kaiser was making a bid for ultimate sea power, so that the High Sea Fleet could claim that they, and not the British Navy, dominated the world’s oceans by strength, numbers, armament and design. The Kaiser was very touchy over the constant English claim that Britannia ruled the waves; and, for the past few years, a flurry of activity, building and counter building, had been going on in the great dockyards of Germany and England. The Royal Navy was not really welcomed in German ports, and members of that Service were certainly not considered to be good news in a den like the Buffel.
Witness was given to this by the way a silence fell across the smoke-filled air as soon as the three Royal Navy men came in. It was a different kind of silence from that which had greeted Steinhauer when he had entered. Then, the seamen and their women had merely shown amused interest; now, an aggressive tension filled the air. It had the same feel to it as the atmosphere which precedes a tropical storm.
The foreigners were almost certainly instructors from Cornwall, for they were men who had obviously seen long service. They also appeared quite unperturbed by the sense of aggression in the bar, walking straight in and ordering schnapps in a mixture of sign language and a few words of badly-learned German.
Steinhauer noticed, in a flitting second, that everyone had looked to the big, fair-haired Ulhurt, and he remembered the man’s reputation for violence.
Even the proprietor turned, as though seeking the petty officer’s permission to serve the foreign sailors.
Steinhauer was to recall that moment many times in the years to come: the brown, stained walls and ceiling, the rough wooden benches and tables, the bar with its bottles and barrels, the men with sailors’ faces, beaten by wind and spray, and the girls whose eyes moved like those of snakes. Most of all, he remembered Ulhurt, whose look became bland and open, half-amused but laced with something deadly.
‘So, the Royal Navy has taken to murdering the German language now.’ Ulhurt spoke a perfect English – which surprised and pleased Steinhauer – with no trace of the guttural accent which so often prevents the Germans from mastering the other tongue. As he spoke, Ulhurt pushed back his chair by placing the sole of his large boot on the corner of his table. He seemed relaxed, though Steinhauer had seen men like this on many occasions. The petty officer was poised, ready and willing to beat the living daylights out of the three Englanders.
‘What you talking about, Kraut?’ The tallest, most muscular of the English sailors took a pace forward.
‘Kraut?’ Ulhurt still appeared amused. ‘What is Kraut, Englishman?’
‘Cabbage face,’ one of the other naval men said loudly.
‘You know what…?’ Ulhurt began, ‘The Royal Navy is shit,’ and with the final word, he launched himself at the biggest Englishman, butting him in the stomach, his great arms delivering blows like axe thuds into the man’s solar plexus.
There was a brief lull, before the whole bar erupted in violence, and it was during the pause that one of the other Englishmen hit Ulhurt with a chair. Steinhauer saw, quite clearly, that these three men were but an advance guard, for suddenly the whole bar was full of English sailors, swinging fists, and even – to his horror – knives.
Steinhauer made a dive towards the exit, was thrown to one side like a discarded doll, and viewed most of what followed through a haze.
He saw one of the girls sail across the room, as though possessed by the power of levitation; an English sailor bury a knife to the hilt in the ribs of a young German; a German seaman deliver two hammer-blows, left and right, which connected with the jaws of two British seamen; he heard the crack of bone quite clearly, and was fascinated by the odd angle at which the mouths hung just after being hit.
He was aware of the terrible noise; the screams of agony; the screeching from the women; the grunts of pain and exertion from men of both sides as they fought with no holds barred; and he saw the small concerted rush of six English ratings, smashing their way through to the bar, vaulting it and grabbing at the bottles which immediately became weapons.
Most of all, Steinhauer watched Petty Officer Ulhurt. For a big man Ulhurt was exceptionally nimble, and very strong – a street fighter, an experienced bar-brawler, who appeared to deal, almost perfunctorily, with his enemy: a pile-driving punch which lifted one man literally off his feet, sending him a dozen yards through the battering throng; a chop to his right, disposing of another who tried to get close. He fought with hands, head, elbows, knees and boots, rarely leaving himself open to attack, always ready for the enemy coming at him from behind.
But Ulhurt was gradually driven back, to make a stand. Not against the wall but the bar. It was his undoing.
By this time there was blood everywhere, and they were not merely throwing the bottles but breaking them, to use the sharded, jagged ends as weapons. Ulhurt, back against the corner of the bar, had done this, and now jabbed a shattered bottle at any Englishman who came near. He did not think, or expect, the two young sailors behind the bar to have the muscle it took to lift a full cask of beer.
But they did lift it – a great cask containing something like a hundred litres, a considerable weight. Not only did they lift it, but, as though engaged in tossing a bag of potato peelings into the sea, they hurled it towards Ulhurt, who had no exit, no escape.
He saw it coming, too late, and leaped to one side, but the full weight of the cask caught him on the right thigh, and he fell, badly, trapped against the wall, his right leg outstretched, taking the force of the cask. Steinhauer watched as the man’s mouth opened in a noiseless scream of agony. Later, he maintained that he actually heard the terrible crunch of bone as the leg was crushed – broken in twenty-eight places, the surgeon said.
Oh, shit, thought Steinhauer. His last hope. Ulhurt who knew the sea, was familiar with dockyards, violence, wireless telegraphy, and spoke five languages well, had been the ideal. Now Steinhauer’s search had shattered with Ulhurt’s leg. Ulhurt was ‘Possibility Number Twelve’. The last. Oh, shit! shit! shit!
Then the dockyard police arrived, and the British naval shore patrol. Men were arrested and taken away. Others were loaded into wagons and moved to the nearby Naval Hospital.
On the pavement outside, Steinhauer showed his credentials to a German naval police officer, who then treated him with great respect and left him alone, wrapped in a misery he could share with nobody.
‘You want to make a good time?’ a whore asked him.
In his anguish, Steinhauer looked at her and saw she was young and attractive. Probably not in the business very long. What the hell, he thought, and went back to her room, which was none too clean.
In the night, between the bouts of purchased sex, Gustav Steinhauer thought again, and wondered. Was it just possible? Could Ulhurt’s accident be a blessing in disguise?
In the morning he went to the hospital to discover that the petty officer’s leg had been amputated at the thigh. It was touch and go, but the surgeon considered it was probably go, because the man had the constitution of an ox.
Gustav Steinhauer returned to Berlin. Two weeks later the now one-legged petty officer Hans-Helmut Ulhurt was moved, much to his consternation, to a private clinic in the Berlin suburb of Neuweissensee. He did not know it then, but his secret war was about to begin.
Chapter Two
The market town of Haversage, nestling in an almost private strategic hollow at the foot of the Berkshire Downs, had known many moments of triumph an
d sadness in its long history. Here Alfred the Great came to recruit men to fight his bloody battles against the Danes; the Doomsday Book shows taxes collected from both bondmen and free – whose main occupation was with the land and cattle – all living in the vicinity of Halfting, which eventually became Haversage.
In the tenth century, Benedictines arrived at what was, by then, a thriving settlement, its people living off the good growing and grazing ground of the area. Work began on the Abbey – little of which remains; though the major part of the Parish Church of SS Peter & Paul dates from those early builders, with additions constructed in the 1780s.
The church itself is a monument, not only to the glory of God, but also to the men who went out from Haversage to do battle throughout the world, and at home in England. There are the tombs of four crusaders within its walls, and at least three other noted soldiers lie under the main aisle.
The Benedictines were, naturally, ousted by Henry VIII’s Commissioners, and, like so many other monasteries, the Abbey was sacked and burned when the King reformed the Church, splitting from the Papal authority of Rome. In place of the peace-loving monks, a new landowner arrived – Richard de Railton, descendant of that Norman knight, Pierre de Royalton, who had distinguished himself at Hastings with Duke William in 1066.
Within eighty years the family had dropped the ‘de’, to become plain Railton, having built the great manor house at the top of Red Hill – a vantage point, which probably derived its name from bitter skirmishes, and the shedding of blood, centuries before. They then set about creating a pattern for other landowners by organizing their farming, and extending a building programme.
Over the years, the Railtons evolved into the true backbone of Haversage. There was usually a Railton living at the Manor, running the estate, and acting as squire to the local community. At the same time, other members of the family spread abroad, serving Monarch and Country in the army, navy, or some branch of the diplomatic Service; and the best of them, the natural patriarchs, returned to Redhill Manor to see out their last years.
So it was with General Sir William Arthur Railton VC KCB DSO – known to all within the family simply as ‘The General’.
The entire family had spent the Christmas of 1909 at Redhill, as was the custom. The General’s younger brother, Giles, had been there with his naval officer son, Andrew, who brought his wife, Charlotte, and their three sons – Caspar, and the twins, Rupert and Ramillies. Giles’ second son, Malcolm, had travelled from Ireland with his recent wife, Bridget; while Marie – Giles’ only daughter – had come with her French husband, Marcel Grenot, from Paris, together with their two children, Paul and Denise.
The General’s own two sons were present – Charles, the younger, with his oddly dowdy wife, Mildred, and their daughter Mary Anne; and John, the Member of Parliament, proud with his young second wife, Sara, and the son of his tragic first marriage, James.
It was the happiest of holidays, for this was a special time at Redhill, and The General was in excellent spirits.
On the Tuesday after Christmas they had gone their separate ways, leaving The General to celebrate the New Year at the Manor with his staff: Porter, his old servant; Cook; her daughter Vera, the head maid; the two undermaids; Natter the groom; Billy Crook odd job boy, and the others.
Giles was to see in the New Year with Andrew, Charlotte, and his grandchildren, and was just preparing to leave his Eccleston Square house, during the early afternoon of New Year’s Eve, when the telephone message came from an almost incoherent Porter – The General’s servant – to say that his master had been taken ill with a seizure.
Immediately, Giles warned Andrew, but did not stress the seriousness of the situation; then set out for Haversage, arriving at the station to be met by Ted Natter with the dog cart.
Even on this bleak evening the golden red brickwork of the Manor appeared inviting as ever – a sight which remained constant in Giles’ memory: for here was his childhood: the holidays from school; the first riding lessons; Christmas; his own father and mother; an age of autumns and a wealth of winters, a cycle of springs and summers.
The dog cart stopped within the square-U of the Manor frontage, and Giles looked up, a sudden weak last flicker of winter sunlight glancing off one of the big leaded windows of the second floor; as though God was vainly trying to flash a heliograph message of hope.
The doctor was there, with a nurse; and the house, usually so lively, had taken on that quiet hushed quality of places where death has come, suddenly, uninvited.
William lay unconscious, as though asleep, upstairs.
Once the doctor had told him that it was only a matter of time, Giles sent for young Billy Crook to run down the hill and warn the vicar. He asked the nurse to let him know as soon as there was any change, then, with professional speed, went to The General’s study.
The room faced south, to the back of the house; and in summer you could step through the tall windows, into the sheltered rose garden, from the top of which almost the entire estate, together with the home farm, could be seen.
Giles went quickly through the papers, knowing what should be destroyed, and what kept. So it was that he became the first to read the will, and perceive the immediate problems.
Only when he had completed the careful sorting of documents did The General’s only brother set about informing the family that the old soldier’s end was near. He died at ten o’clock that night, and the nurse reported he had clearly spoken the word ‘Patience’, at the end. It puzzled the nurse, though Giles merely nodded.
Soon, from the town below, the passing bell began to toll; the tenor, ‘Big Robin’, the ringers called it: great melancholy booms of resonance, vibrating the frost already forming on the trees; the sound creeping, like a warning, into every household.
In the Market Square, the butcher, Jack Calmer, blew his nose, looked at his wife, and their daughter, Rachel, pausing in his eating. ‘We should make a prayer for him, I reckon. A good brave man. A gentleman.’
They heard the bell in the Royal Oak, the Blue Boar, the Swan, the Leg of Mutton, and the Railton Arms. Men who had known The General, and even fought under him, put down their beer mugs and stood in respect, for they knew it meant inevitable change.
The bell notes were heard for miles, clear above the town. They heard it in the almshouses half way up Red Hill, and old Miss Ducket shed a tear, for she had known The General as a young man. To many people the steady bell-notes brought home the fact that the winter of their own lives was upon them, and the clock on the mantel ticked for all. The Redhill Manor farm manager, young Bob Berry, heard it, and felt fear for other reasons, as indeed did the estate manager, Jack Hunter.
John, Charles, and their families, arrived before luncheon on the next morning; Andrew, and his family, were there by the afternoon. Marie, and her husband, Marcel Grenot, were again making the journey from Paris, having only just returned following the Christmas festivities; while Malcolm and Bridget – spending the New Year with Bridget’s parents in County Wicklow – would get to the Manor by the next evening, and stay until after the funeral.
So, it had been Giles who made certain that the family secrets remained safe, and Giles who broke the news of The General’s will to the old man’s two sons; Giles who anticipated the trouble, and did his best to counteract it.
The difficulties presented by the will were threefold, resting wholly within the areas of property and finance, together with the individual characters, and ambitions, of The General’s sons, John and Charles. With John, the problem was multiplied by his young wife, Sara, considered by some of the family to be immature, spoiled and headstrong.
John had been unlucky in marriage, his first wife, Beatrice, having died giving birth to their only son, James, now in his seventeenth year. The boy had been brought up by a series of nannies, and then had gone through his baptism of fire, first at a preparatory school, and finally within the disciplined life of Wellington College – the family school.
Unlike his brother Charles, John had never been thought of as much of a ladies’ man. It was, therefore, with a sense almost of shock that the family had heard, just under three years before, that John William Arthur Railton MP had announced his engagement to Miss Sara Champney-Owen – a girl twenty-five years his junior. Within a year they were married, and, since then, John had seen more of London society life than ever before.
Whatever was thought privately of Sara, she appeared to care deeply for John, and made such a hit with the true powers within the government that her husband’s career stood every chance of distinct advancement.
But now with The General dead, the prospect of John Railton being able to continue in politics at all hung in the balance – and that was a matter of property and duty.
Apart from several small financial bequests, and an important two thousand pounds a year to Charles, the basis of The General’s Last Will and Testament lay in the whole question of family property.
Because of their position, the Railton family had, over the years, amassed both wealth and lands. By 1910, as well as Redhill Manor, with its estates, home farm, and a large income from rents in the town of Haversage itself, the family owned four further properties in London: the excellent house in Cheyne Walk, in which John lived with his bride; the house just off South Audley Street, comfortable enough for Charles, Mildred and Mary Anne; and a tall, terraced home in King Street, where Andrew lived with his family during the periods of his service in the Royal Navy when he was in England.
The Eccleston Square house – the finest of all – had been designated as a family property until Giles’, and The General’s, father had bequeathed it, for all time, to Giles, with the proviso that it should not be sold, or passed out of the family.
